There was an interesting comment in the Contagious coverage of the Cyber Lions winners from James Hilton, AKQA co-founder and Cannes judge: 'Digital,' he said, 'is everywhere and everything. It's redundant to talk about it as one category'. Indeed. But we still do, just about everywhere.
It was interesting as well that the category was 'book-ended' (as Flo Heiss described it) by two solutions that were about as far apart in every way as two solutions can be. At one end was the amazing Intel/Toshiba multi-episode, content-led project The Beauty Inside which saw members of the audience audition for, and cast in, a series of films which ended up acheiving 70 million views (and apparently a 360% lift in sales).
At the other end was Oreo's culture-jacking Daily Twist which celebrated Oreo's 100th birthday with a hundred days worth of current, timely, spreadable content. One rich, immersive, episodic, long-form. The other quick, topical, adaptive, responsive.
This divergence in form speaks to both the challenge but mostly the opportunity inherent in capitalising on changing patterns of attention (slow, fast and spiky), and mastery over both 'stock' (durable, longevity in value, slower moving) and 'flow' (inexpensive, lives in the moment) types of content. The winners of-course, will be those that can do both. Fascinating times.
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